Hershey Makes Progress on Simple Ingredients Transition

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Hershey Makes Progress on Simple Ingredients Transition

08/19/2016

HERSHEY, Pa. — The Hershey Co. announced it has made considerable progress on its February 2015 commitment to transition products across its portfolio to simple ingredients and continue to work with transparency by sharing information about what is in its products and strengthening its responsible sourcing program.

In addition to reformulating Hershey’s Kisses Milk Chocolates, Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Bars and Hershey’s Milk Chocolate Drops, earlier this year the company introduced Hershey's Simply 5 Syrup, which is made with five simple ingredients and no high-fructose corn syrup or artificial ingredients. Hershey noted simple ingredients are key to its growing snacks portfolio and can also be found in products such as its Krave Jerky line.

Hershey is currently working to transition additional confection products to simpler ingredients, and Hershey’s Special Dark Chocolate, Mr. Goodbar Milk Chocolate Bars, Krackel Chocolate Bars and Hershey’s Miniatures Assortment are set to hit shelves without artificial ingredients by early 2017.

After collaborating with the Grocery Manufacturers Association and other industry members to develop SmartLabel, a platform that provides consumers with detailed product ingredient and nutritional information, Hershey will add it to 600 additional product SKUs in 2016 and to all Hershey products by 2017. This is in addition to the 200 product SKUs that added SmartLabel on-pack in 2015. The station nutrition information for 370 products on its company website will be replaced with links to those products' SmartLabel pages.

Hershey also continues to make substantial strides to responsibly sourced sustainable ingredients, the company said. In 2015, it sourced 50 percent of cocoa used globally from certified, sustainable sources, and traced 90 percent of palm oil purchases to the mill level. Its future goals include achieving 100-percent certified and sustainable cocoa in all chocolate products worldwide by 2020 and sourcing 100-percent cage-free eggs for its products in North America by 2020.